


here for you

by hepaticas



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 11:44:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/991634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hepaticas/pseuds/hepaticas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg is in a car accident that leaves him in a coma, and Eduardo Saverin becomes acting CEO of Facebook. Originally posted on the kinkmeme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	here for you

It’s 2004. Eduardo is in New York. He is on the phone, sitting on his bed and talking to his mother, his cell phone balanced between his shoulder and his ear so that his hands are free for the Indian takeout he’d picked up on his way home from yet another round of unsuccessful meetings with advertisers. It’s late, and he’s assuring his mother that yes, of course he’s eating healthy, and no, he doesn’t want to talk to his father, when his phone beeps to inform him that he’s getting another call. He sets down his fork so he can see who it is, sighs heavily, and then says, “Mamãe, hold on a minute, Chris is calling,” because Chris is in Palo Alto right now and, unlike Dustin and Mark, he does actually remember the time difference, so if he’s calling this late it’s probably actually important.

“What’s up, Chris?” He says when he switches calls. There is no answer for a moment, just static, and Eduardo wonders idly if he’s been pocket dialed or something as he balances his phone on his shoulder again and picks up his fork. “Hello?” He says, through a mouthful of curry, and then there is a ragged breath from the other side of the line and Chris finally speaks.

“Wardo,” he says, and Eduardo puts down his food, because he doesn’t sound good. “There’s been an accident.”

Two minutes later, Eduardo hangs up with Chris and almost forgets that his mother is still on the phone. “I have to go,” he says, feeling a little bit detached from reality. “I – I – I – Mark’s in a coma. There was a car accident. I have to go.”  
-  
Eduardo is at the house in Palo Alto, perched on the edge of a sofa cushion. His suit is rumpled and damp from the rain outside and he’s just come from the hospital, which was the first place he went when he got off the plane three hours ago. Dustin is still there, because Chris finally snapped and declared that he was taking Eduardo back to the house to get some sleep, but none of them actually wanted to leave Mark alone. Dustin was in the car with Mark during the accident, and he’s got a broken arm and a set of seriously nasty bruises to show for it, but he’s alright. He was wearing his seat belt. Mark wasn’t. Mark was turned around, trying to get his laptop from the backseat of the car. According to Dustin, he’d just had some brilliant idea and he had to, _had to_ get it typed up before he forgot. 

Sean is sitting across from Eduardo, talking and looking exhausted, but Eduardo isn’t listening, can’t even bring himself to be annoyed that Sean Parker is in the house, because all he can think about is Mark being tossed through the windshield of the Toyota Camry that Eduardo rented for him. There’s a box in Eduardo’s lap with Mark’s personal effects in it, given to Chris earlier in the day by someone at the hospital. Eduardo stares at Mark’s hoodie, Mark’s bloody t-shirt, Mark’s cell phone, Mark’s wallet, Mark’s laptop, snapped into two pieces during the crash. He feels like he might vomit.

He’s considering just excusing himself and going to bed – _Mark’s room is at the end of the hall,_ Chris had said, and the idea of sleeping in Mark’s empty bed had made Eduardo dizzy, because _oh God, this was really happening,_ but the idea of _not_ sleeping there made him feel even worse – when something Sean says makes it through the awful, cloudy haze in his head. His eyes snap up from the box of things in his lap to stare at Sean, who is still talking, looking nothing like the cocky asshole that Eduardo met in New York and everything like a scared, sad young man. 

“I’m sorry,” Eduardo says, cutting Sean off. “Could you just – what did you just say?”

Sean looks up, blinks a couple times and says, “Have you even been listening? Whatever. Mark left instructions, man. The first night I got here, we were talking about how big Facebook was getting, how big it _could_ get, and the next day Mark went out and had a will made, in case anything ever happened to him.”

“Okay,” Eduardo says, because he’s not really sure what this has to do with him, and he hasn’t even been thinking about Facebook throughout this whole thing. “Okay, fine, great, so, you and Dustin and the interns can keep doing whatever it is he wanted done until he wakes up and –“

“No, man,” Sean cuts in. “You don’t understand. Mark left you in charge. He was very clear. In the event that anything happened to him, he wanted you to take over where he left off. As of today, you’re Facebook’s acting CEO.”

Eduardo stares at him, speechless, his mouth hanging open a little. “Yeah,” Sean says, smiling dryly, the first smile Eduardo’s seen all night. “That’s the same reaction I had when he told me.”  
-  
It’s a Thursday night. Everyone else is back at the house, celebrating – admittedly a little bit halfheartedly, but still – and Eduardo is by himself in Mark’s hospital room, sitting in the chair by the bed in his perfectly pressed trousers. His jacket is hanging over the back of the chair, his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and he should be worried about wrinkles, but he’s not. 

Thiel had been hard to convince. Really hard, actually, and okay, Eduardo couldn’t blame him, because the genius behind Facebook was _in a coma_. He’d come around though – Sean’s charm and Eduardo’s conviction had convinced him, finally, a week and a half after their actual meeting took place. 

“Mark,” Eduardo says, leaning forward onto the edge of the bed and propping his chin up in one hand. Mark is so still, his only movement the soft rise and fall of his breathing, and when Eduardo hesitates, feeling silly talking to him, the silence is punctuated only by the beeping of the heart monitor. Eduardo recalls a thousand films and television shows where people are told to talk to their comatose loved ones, thinks about the way the nurses always smiled encouragingly at him and the others when they arrived for visits, remembers talking Mark away from his laptop late at night in Kirkland, and then takes a deep breath and presses on. “Mark, I’ve got some good news,” he says. “Peter Thiel just made an angel investment of a half a million dollars. Facebook is getting an office.” He hesitates a moment, tries to imagine what Mark would say if he were awake and this was an actual conversation. He can’t, because if Mark were awake, Eduardo wouldn’t have to tell him this.

“I’m gonna do my best,” he says. “I – I’m gonna do my best to make Facebook what you wanted it to be, okay? I’m gonna try, I promise. But I’m not you, Mark, and I – please wake up. Just, please. Wake up. I need my CEO.” Unsurprisingly, Mark does not answer. Eduardo sighs. He should go. He’d told the others that he was just making a beer run.

After a couple minutes of silence, he straightens up and grabs his jacket off the chair, brushes some creases from his pants. Just before he leaves the room he stops, turns around with the door half open and looks at Mark, with his healing bruises and his bandaged, half-shaved head. “We did it, Mark,” he says. And then he leaves.  
-  
It’s 2005 and Eduardo is sitting by Mark’s bedside on his lunch break. Mark’s bruises are healed and his hair has grown back. If Eduardo looks at him just right, so that he can’t see the IV and the monitors, he can almost pretend that they are back at Harvard and Mark has just fallen asleep in the middle of the day after a long coding marathon. Eduardo comes here every day – or he tries to. Sometimes he has meetings that get in the way or sometimes the nurses won’t let him in because they’re bathing Mark, or because he has a scan, or a procedure, or something, but generally speaking Eduardo has lunch in Mark’s hospital room every day. Chris, Dustin and Sean tell him this is too often, but they say it with sad expressions and an air of resignation; once a day is _not enough_ for Eduardo, and he thinks they know that.

“So,” he says, crossing his legs and popping the top off his salad. The only sounds in the room are the whirring and beeping of machines and the fizzing of Eduardo’s diet coke. He cannot hear Mark breathing over the machines, but he can see his chest rising and falling, and these days that is enough to make him feel – not good, but okay. He can deal with the situation as long as he has that to remind him that Mark is alive, even if he’s not quite there. “So, I’m being sued by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss,” he tells Mark, stabbing at a bit of lettuce with his fork. He remembers Mark looking up at him from the sofa in Kirkland, saying _no, it says_ I _could face legal action_ , and he feels a little bit hysterical, like it is some kind of huge, cosmic joke.

He is quiet for a moment, eating his lunch and thinking and then he says, “Their lawyer’s a fucking asshole. You’d hate him.” He laughs, briefly, and then adds, “You’d eat him alive.”  
-  
Eduardo is seated on one side of an enormous table, staring at Divya and the Winklevosses. Their lawyer is reading out a string of emails written by Mark, and Eduardo is furious, he’s so angry he can barely breathe. He’s tapping a pen against one hand, over and over, and his own lawyer keeps shooting him nervous looks. Tyler, Cameron and Divya are all glaring at him. He glares back. Their lawyer looks up, trailing off at the end of one of the emails.

“Mr. Saverin,” he says, “were you aware that while Mr. Zuckerberg was building TheFacebook, he was also communicating with my clients?”

Eduardo turns slowly to look at him. “No,” he says, the word coming out more sharply than he means it to. His lawyer nudges him covertly and he takes a deep breath and continues, a bit more calmly, “I wasn’t. Not until we went live and received their letter. It really didn’t have anything to with their dating site though –“

“You weren’t there!” Tyler cuts in and Eduardo spins to look at him.

“No, I wasn’t,” he snaps. “Maybe we should ask someone who was. Like Mark. Mark, did TheFacebook have anything to do with Harvard Connection?” he says, turning to address the empty chair to his right. “Oh. Wait. Sorry. We can’t ask Mark, because Mark is in a coma.”

“Mr. Saverin – “ says the Winklevoss’s lawyer, but Eduardo ignores him.

“Mark Zuckerberg has to be turned every four hours so he doesn’t get bed sores, a nurse has to watch him to make sure he doesn’t choke on his own saliva, and you want to know if I knew he was talking to you two years ago. You’re asking me if he knew you came from money. Of course he knew. You think anyone on campus _didn’t_ know?”

“Eduardo,” his lawyer says, putting a hand on his shoulder. Eduardo shrugs him off.

“No, okay,” he says, “maybe Mark led you on. You made him mad when you suggested he needed to fix his image. He dicked you around in retaliation. Fine. But he didn’t steal your website. Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook; if you had even half the brains it took to accomplish that between the three of you, we wouldn’t be here right now. Match dot com for Harvard guys? Mark created a website that changed the world, not just one that aimed to get rich guys laid, and if you think the fact that he’s not here to answer your questions means that you can bully me into giving you some kind of consolation prize, because things didn’t turn out the way daddy told you they would, then think again.”

The room is silent for a moment before Divya says, “I can’t wait to stand over your shoulder and watch you write us a check.”

Eduardo smiles. His lawyer clears his throat and says, “Well. I think it’s time we broke for lunch.”  
-  
“Don’t worry,” Eduardo tells Mark as he throws the remains of his salad out. “I’m not going to let them take it. This is our thing, not theirs.”  
-  
Eduardo doesn’t know what time it is, but there’s no quiet chatter outside his office, no laughing or coffee brewing or microwave beeping, so it’s probably late. A glance at the corner of his computer screen tells him that yes, it’s almost nine and he’s still in the office. His assistant is still there, too. He knows because she’s currently standing at the corner of his desk, wearing a long-suffering expression and holding a sub sandwich and a bottle of water.

“Eduardo,” she says. “You have to eat,” and he takes the sandwich and the water with only a peripheral glance at her. He was planning on just chugging a thermos of coffee and eating when he got home – whenever that was – but if the food is going to come to him, well, he’ll take it. 

“Thanks,” he says, unwrapping the sandwich without looking away from his computer screen. He leans in closer and squints at something, makes a mental note to get his eyes checked. He really needs glasses. “You should go home,” he tells his assistant, because she’s still standing by his desk.

“ _You_ should go home,” she counters and he laughs.

“I know, I know,” he says. “I’m going, just, I have to finish this.” And then he has to finish whatever comes up after this, too, but he doesn’t need to say that. 

She leans over his shoulder to glance at his screen and then sighs. “More privacy stuff?” She asks and he confirms it with a nod. “You’re going to be here all night,” she says, which is probably true. “I’ll go make you a fresh pot of coffee before I go.”

“You don’t have to –“ he starts, but she turns around where she’s standing at the door and fixes him with a look that makes him smile sheepishly and immediately give in. “Alright,” he says. “Okay. Thank you.”

She leaves the office and he remembers being on the other side of this conversation, bringing Mark red bull and telling him to _sleep, Mark, you have got to get some sleep._ He remembers dragging Mark into bed once just after Facebook went live, telling him he had to rest in order to be any good to the site, and he decides he’s going to go home, he’s going to go to bed, he’s going to take his own advice… Right after he finishes what he’s doing.

Ten minutes later his assistant pokes her head in to say the coffee’s done and he waves his hand vaguely to thank her. “Don’t stay too late, Eduardo,” she says, “and eat your sandwich.”

He nods, but he’s already forgotten the sandwich exists, and it’s another four hours before he stumbles home into bed.  
-  
It’s 2007 and Eduardo is sitting in his office, glowering at his computer and getting progressively more irritated the more he scrolls. Dustin is sprawled out on the sofa in the corner of his office, and Chris and Sean are sitting in the two chairs opposite his desk. Chris looks exhausted and a little bit like he’s thinking of chugging a gallon of bleach, but Sean and Dustin are both wearing enormous, shit-eating grins. The topic of discussion is a recent article about Eduardo, which references a 20 year old article that claimed Eduardo’s father had ties to the Brazilian Mafia, and speculates that Eduardo may have used those ties to have Mark put into his coma so that he could take over the company.

Eduardo does not find this funny. Well, he does a little, but mostly it makes him mad. Chris is just furious because he’s the one who has to actually deal with it. Sean and Dustin think it is hilarious.

“Listen to this,” Sean says, reading from his phone, “ _’no wonder the doe-eyed CEO never does interviews; he’s probably afraid he’ll slip and reveal his true nature. This reporter is onto you, Mr. Saverin. You are not Bambi, but the hunter who killed his mother.’_ ” This sends Dustin into another round of hysterical laughter. Sean looks back and forth between Chris and Eduardo, grinning broadly. “Dude,” he says. “Dude. Come on.”

Chris cracks a smile which he immediately wipes away and replaces with a scowl. Eduardo ignores Sean in favor of more scrolling. He went out to look at the article when they told him about it, see, which then led to essentially googling himself and, well – it turns out he is a popular subject on the internet. And, okay, it’s not as if he never noticed people snapping pictures of him, but there’s pictures of him _everywhere_. Pictures of him at lunch with Sean, laughing at a joke, pictures of him out with his latest girlfriend, pictures of him talking to Chris in front of the Facebook offices, pictures of him jogging, pictures of him at the park with Dustin and his dog, pictures of him leaving the hospital, and they just keep going, pages and pages of articles and pictures. 

“ _’It’s no surprise,’_ ” Sean continues, reading from his phone again, “ _’given his history of torturing animals. Apparently the chicken wasn’t Eduardo’s only victim.’_ ” Dustin practically shrieks with laughter. Sean looks up at Eduardo and says, “Am I missing something here? What does that mean, the chicken?”

“It’s a long story,” Eduardo says, which actually means he just doesn’t want to tell it. 

“No, no, no, come on, you have to tell me,” Sean starts, but Chris talks over him.

“You should do an interview,” Chris says.

“What? No,” Eduardo starts, but Chris is already mounting a defense.

“Yes. Just one, because a big part of this mess is that your public image is all speculation and the occasional press conference.”

“He’s right,” Dustin says, pushing himself into a sitting position and wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “Just go out there and talk to Oprah and then everyone will know that you are actually really nice and you just look really intense sometimes because of all your feelings. And then people will stop making serial killer jokes about you, hopefully, because those stopped being funny like a year ago.”

“I don’t have time for that,” Eduardo says, because everything Dustin just said sounds horrible. “I don’t have time for any of this,” he adds, shutting his browser and opening the spreadsheet he’d been studying before the three of them came into his office. 

“Then you’ll have to make time,” Sean says, and Eduardo spins to glare at him. Sean holds his hands up in mock surrender, still smiling. “Come on, man. Gotta clean up your image. For the good of the company.”

“You’re one to talk,” Eduardo grumbles, and Sean puts a hand over his heart, pulls a pained face, even though they both know it’s been a year and a half since Chris and Eduardo last had to clean up after him. “I don’t _want_ to do an interview,” Eduardo whines, petulant, flopping backwards in his chair with enough force to send it spinning. “I’m a business man, not a celebrity.”

“Unfortunately,” Chris says, “You’re both.” 

“Fine,” Eduardo says after a moment. “One interview. Just one.”  
-  
“It was awful,” Eduardo tells Mark after the interview, loosening his tie and crossing his legs. “I mean – okay, it wasn’t actually that bad. The interviewer was nice. She invited me out for drinks. I said no. Chris says the reception has been generally positive, so that’s good.” 

He leans back in his chair and stares at Mark. He’s got stubble on his jaw. Eduardo thinks about how someone else will shave his face for him tomorrow, because he can’t, and adds, “It should have been you she was interviewing. You probably would have been funnier. Or you would have said something rude and given Chris an ulcer. I wish it had been you.”  
-  
It’s 2008 and Eduardo is in Chris’s office, surrounded by piles and piles of paperwork. The privacy issues are back with a vengeance – not that they ever really stopped being a problem, but they’ve gotten worse – and they’ve been at this for hours, passing papers back and forth, swearing a lot, and leaving Chris’s office only to get lunch an hour ago. 

“Alright,” Chris says, dropping the papers he’s holding and putting his hands up in the air. “I’m done. That’s it. Calling an end to all work for the day. Fuck this.” Eduardo snorts and thinks about disagreeing, but instead he just puts down his own papers and picks up his water bottle from lunch. 

“Fair enough,” he says, taking a long sip of water. “Break time.” Chris narrows his eyes knowingly, because there was no way that he was ever going to miss the fact that he said ‘done for the day’ and Eduardo heard ‘break time.’ He doesn’t say anything though, and so Eduardo taps his fingers on the arm of his chair and asks, faux-casual, “Have you heard anything more about that position with the Obama campaign?”

Chris goes from suspicious to sheepish in seconds flat. “Yeah, I – I’ve been… thinking about it.”

“Thinking about it?” Eduardo prompts, and Chris shrugs and leans forward, elbows on his desk.

“I don’t know. I really want to do it, Eduardo. I mean, it’s not that I want to leave, but…” He trails off, avoiding eye contact.

“But what?” Eduardo says softly. Chris finally looks at him.

“This was Mark’s dream,” Chris says. “We can’t keep living it for him forever.”

Eduardo smiles. “ _You_ can’t,” he says. Chris frowns at him, but he keeps smiling. “You should go, Chris. Work for Obama. Take over the world.” And with that, he gets up from his chair, collects the trash from their lunch and leaves. “I’ve got a meeting,” he says on his way out the door. “I’ll see you later.”  
-  
Eduardo is in a bar in Seattle with Sean, who has been in New York with his latest protégé for the last year. They met up an hour ago, at a tech conference; Sean walked up to Eduardo and said, “Hey Wardo. It’s been a while. I almost didn’t recognize you. Are those gray hairs I see?” and Eduardo replied, “No, your visions just going; what are you, like, a hundred now?” and then they’d slipped out of the conference to go get drunk, because both of them could only shake so many hands before they couldn’t take it anymore. 

They’re two drinks each into the night, just tipsy enough that they’ve got a bit nostalgic, and Sean is laughing into his beer as he listens to Eduardo rage about the first time they met.

“I _hated_ you,” Eduardo is saying, “I mean, I really, really hated you. I spent the next two weeks trying to convince Mark that you were an asshole.”

“Yeah? How’d that go?” Sean asks, eyes twinkling.

“About as well as you’d expect,” Eduardo says with a laugh. “I’m glad he didn’t listen though. If he had, you wouldn’t have been around back when… you know.” Sean nods. Neither of them says that if Mark had listened, he might not have gone to California and the accident might not have happened.

“I guess we were both wrong about each other,” Sean says, turning his bottle in circles on the table.

“How do you mean?” Eduardo asks, curious. 

“I thought Mark needed to replace you,” Sean says, and it would feel like a confession if they were anybody else, but the two of them are so past the point of caring about that sort of thing. “I was going to try and get rid of you. I thought you were the wrong guy for the job.”

Eduardo smiles a little sadly and drains his beer. “Nah,” he says. “You weren’t wrong. I was the wrong guy for that job back then. And I’m definitely the wrong guy for _this_ job. The right guy’s just… unavailable.”

“I don’t know,” Sean says. “Maybe there can be two right guys.”  
-  
It’s 2009 and Eduardo is at the hospital, which is no surprise to anyone. He’s sitting next to the bed, writing a speech for some meeting or another, he’s forgotten, to be honest, and they’re all the same. He talks while he works, chattering aimlessly as he scratches out a sentence and writes a new one in. “There’s this app,” he says, “It’s a game we’ve introduced, a Zynga game, called FarmVille. God, it’s the worst, but it’s addicting. Dustin thought it was funny because, you know… farm animals.” He smiles mildly. “He wanted to add an option to feed chicken to the chickens. Thought it would be hilarious. I almost let him. I – I thought you would find it funny, too.” 

He looks at Mark’s face, still and soft and slightly scarred, and he realizes he’s not even writing anymore, just doodling in his journal. “Oops,” he says, and then he imagines Mark rolling his eyes at him. He should go back to the office, he thinks, because technically his lunch break has been over for fifteen minutes, but he _is_ the boss, so no one will question him if he’s gone a little longer, and he really doesn’t _want_ to go back, because Dustin has started giving him these awful, pitying looks when he gets back from the hospital every day. He could just ditch the rest of the day, stay in Mark’s hospital room where he’s the only person feeling sorry for himself, wait until the nurses kick him out and then go home…

But no. Facebook needs its CEO. So Eduardo touches Mark’s foot lightly through the blanket and goes back to work.  
-  
“Hang on,” Dustin is saying, “no, hang on, he dumped you because _why_?”

Eduardo smiles. It’s ten o’clock at night on a Wednesday and he is at Dustin’s house, seeking consolation because has just been really spectacularly and publicly dumped by his boyfriend of six months, Scott. Scott was an engineer with a red beard and a really great ass, and he broke up with Eduardo because, “He said I eat too neatly. We were out to dinner and I was cutting my steak and he said, ‘that’s it, I can’t take it anymore, you eat too neatly.’”

“You’re shitting me,” Dustin says, opening a beer and passing it to Eduardo before grabbing another one. “You’re actually shitting me. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“One hundred percent serious,” Eduardo says, saluting Dustin with his beer before taking a long drink. “Didn’t even have the decency to go for ‘you work too much’, which at least would have been true. No. I eat too neatly.”

“Ugh,” Dustin says articulately, flopping into a chair at the dining room table next to Eduardo. “You do work too much,” he says, and Eduardo laughs, because yes, he knows. “I’m sorry, man. I never liked him anyway though,” he continues, which is completely untrue, because they both know Dustin had loved Scott from the moment he’d demonstrated his ability to do a truly impeccable Al Pacino impression. “Watch, I bet the next one’ll work out! Oh, you know who’s single? Jim from accounting, you know, the one with the hair.”

“Jim from accounting who is always showing off the tattoo on his back of Matthew McConaughey’s face? I’m not interested in Jim from accounting.”

“Yeah, okay. We’ll just have to hook you a super model. Who was it last year that told Cosmo you were their celebrity crush?”

“No one,” Eduardo says. “You made that up.”

“Didn’t.”

“No one believes you.”

“Whatever.”

Eduardo leans back in his chair and smiles at Dustin, feeling, suddenly, very grateful for him. Chris and Sean are gone, and yeah, maybe Dustin has moved on from Facebook, but he’s still here. He hasn’t left.

They sit together, drinking their beers in companionable silence for a long time. When Eduardo’s beer is very nearly empty, he turns it back and forth, watching the liquid slosh around inside like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen and says, “I miss him, Dustin.”

There is a pause and then Dustin says, “Who? Scott?”

Eduardo looks up at him, smiles sadly. “No,” he says and Dustin nods, because he knew who he was talking about all along.  
-  
On a Thursday in 2010, Mark wakes up for five minutes. 

The hospital calls his parents to tell them, and they call Eduardo, and Eduardo feels very selfish for wishing the hospital would have just called him. He was confused, the doctors say, and he couldn’t speak, but he was responding to basic stimuli. When he goes to the hospital the next day, the doctors keep telling him that the fact that Mark has started regaining consciousness does not mean he will ever get back to full awareness. Eduardo nods his head and says he understands that, but he can’t help the spark of hope that lights in his chest.

The next day Mark wakes up again, and then again the next day, and the next, always for just a few minutes. Eduardo never tries to catch him when he’s awake, because he doesn’t want to see Mark like that, disoriented and unable to articulate a thought, but as time goes on, Mark starts waking up longer and longer and becoming more and more responsive, until one day he wakes up and manages to speak to the doctor. It’s not much, really – they’ve established a system of answering yes or no questions, because until now Mark has only been able to communicate with nods and head shakes, but on this particular day the doctor asks Mark if he knows who he is and instead of nodding, Mark tells him his name. It’s not much, but it’s something, and Eduardo and Dustin spend that evening celebrating by making loud, excited sounds at Chris over Skype.

At four AM on a Sunday, Eduardo gets a call from Mark’s mother. It’s been two months since Mark started waking up, and Eduardo has seen him conscious several times, because Mark is awake nearly all the time these days. It’s been very stressful every time, because Mark is still not quite Mark, but Eduardo doesn’t regret going, because he’d hate for Mark to think he wasn’t visiting at all. He answers his phone sleepily, half annoyed at being woken and half concerned that something has gone wrong, but he wakes up very quickly when Mark’s mother says his name, because she’s clearly crying. 

“What’s wrong?” he says, and she laughs.

“Nothing,” she says. “Eduardo, he’s awake. He’s awake and he’s lucid and he’s asking to see you.”  
-  
Eduardo stumbles into the hospital at four thirty in the morning, wearing a ratty old t-shirt, pajama pants, and house slippers. He doesn’t have his wallet, and when the lady at the front desk asks for his ID to sign him in, he spends five minutes trying to convince her to accept his keycard for the Facebook offices as identification, because it does, after all, have his name on it. It doesn’t have a picture though, and so she tells him no, over and over again, until a receptionist who he knows come back from her break and lets him through.

He wants to march straight into Mark’s room, but a nurse stops him before he can. “He doesn’t know how long it’s been,” she tells him, “He remembers the accident and he knows he’s been in a coma, because we’ve told him, but he doesn’t realize how long it’s been yet. It might be a bit of a shock if you’ve… changed, since last time he saw you, so, just, be prepared.”

Eduardo nods, because he’s afraid if he speaks something rude will come out, and he really just wants to be let into Mark’s room. He thinks about the gray hairs in his sideburns and the wrinkles around his eyes and wonders if he’s really changed so much that he could surprise Mark.

When the nurse finally lets him go in, Eduardo finds Mark sitting up in bed and flicking through the channels on his TV. He’s clearly having some trouble holding the remote and he looks frustrated, but he looks up, wide eyed, when Eduardo walks in. “Wardo,” he says, and it only sounds a little bit like a question, which is good, because all Eduardo can do is make a sound that is half laugh and half sob. “Hi,” Mark says, and Eduardo stumbles across the room to the chair to sit down, because he suddenly feels very light headed. 

“I – I was in an accident,” Mark says. Eduardo nods, because he still can’t speak. He feels lighter than he has in six years and he knows he’s probably freaking Mark out by just staring at him, but he can’t think of anything else to do, except maybe grab him and hold onto him and kiss him and make him swear not to ever fucking do anything stupid like slip into a coma again, lest Eduardo be forced to do something drastic. That’s probably an even worse idea than staring though, so. “Look, Wardo, I just wanted – I don’t know what’s happened since the accident, but I just wanted to say that you should – I want you to come to California. I need you with me. I can’t have you in New York, okay, I want – I need you here.”

Eduardo stares at him for a moment, thinks about the nurse warning him that Mark doesn’t know how long it’s been, and then he has to fold his arms on the edge of the bed and put his head down, because he feels dangerously close to losing it. His eyes are glassy with tears when he lifts his head, but he’s smiling helplessly as he rests his chin on his folded arms and nods. “Okay, Mark,” he says. “I’m here for you.”

Mark smiles back at him and Eduardo thinks it might be the most wonderful thing he’s ever seen.  
-  
Mark is released from the hospital a month later, allowed to go home with Eduardo as long as Eduardo watches him and remembers to take him to his physical therapy appointments and his check-ups. Eduardo takes two weeks off work in order to be home with Mark, and it’s really not a big deal, because, as Sean says when he comes to visit, he’s CEO, bitch. 

It’s weird, adjusting to life with Mark back in it. A nice sort of weird, but weird all the same. Eduardo spends his days hovering and catching Mark up on everything that’s happened since 2004 and occasionally checking in on Facebook on his laptop, because, look, you don’t just stop being a workaholic overnight. Mark, for his part, is frustrated by how slow the recovery process is and frequently grumpy and petulant because of how much he’s missed, which is really no surprise to anyone. Dustin drops by constantly and Chris comes to visit for a few days and it’s strange for everyone, jumpstarting a friendship that has been, for all intents and purposes, on hold for six years. Eduardo thinks it’s easiest for him, because he never stopped talking to Mark like he was listening, and so he just has to get used to Mark talking back again. He thinks it’s hardest for Mark, because he’s the only who hasn’t changed.

Eduardo finally goes back to work after two weeks, because he has several important meetings that his assistant tells him really cannot be put off anymore, and when he comes home at five thirty – without a doubt the earliest he’s left work in the last six years – it is to find Mark in his office, using one of Eduardo’s old laptops, which he distinctly remembers being password protected.

“What are you doing?” Eduardo asks curiously, leaning against the door frame with his hands in his pockets. 

Mark glances at him briefly and then says, “Research. I have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Hmmm,” Eduardo says, neither approving nor disapproving. “How did you get into that laptop?” He asks and the look Mark gives him is fifty different shades of _don’t be an idiot._

“Your password is always the same,” he says and then he clicks a tab, pulls up Facebook and says, “What did you do to the wall?”

“I didn’t do anything to the wall,” Eduardo says. “The programmers did things to the wall, I just approved them.”

“It’s terrible,” Mark says. “I hate it.”

“That’s what they all say,” Eduardo tells him cheerfully. “But after a couple of weeks, they don’t know how they lived without it.”

Mark hums and Eduardo takes it to mean he’s dismissed. “I’m going to order dinner,” he says. “You have physical therapy tonight, so don’t stay up here too long.” Another hum. He smiles to himself as he leaves the room.  
-  
An hour later, Eduardo calls Mark’s name as he lays out Chinese food containers on the coffee table and then he calls out again when no answer comes. He waits a few minutes, picks at a container of lo mein, and then sighs and gets up, heads for the office.

“Mark,” he starts when he’s coming in the door, but he cuts off abruptly when he sees what Mark’s doing. He’s still sitting in front of the laptop, but now he’s got a video open – and not just any video, but a video of Eduardo’s one and only filmed interview, the one he was forced into by Chris. Mark has found a pair of Eduardo’s old headphones and plugged them in, but they aren’t plugged in all the way and Eduardo can still hear the audio from where he’s standing frozen in the doorway.

_”I wasn’t always CEO,”_ The Eduardo on the screen is saying. _”I was CFO, in the beginning. I just supplied cash and snacks while everyone else coded.”_

The interviewer smiles. _”You became CEO in 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg was in an accident that left him in a coma, is that right?”_

_”Yeah,”_ says Eduardo. _”Yes, that’s right.”_

_”And what was that like?”_ The interviewer asks.

_”Terrifying,”_ Eduardo says. _”I mean – yeah, terrifying. Um, my best friend was in a coma and that was awful enough and then I found out he’d left me in charge of this website, this thing we’d made together, but – but it was his baby, you know? Facebook was Mark’s; I wasn’t there for the website, not like he was. I was there for him. So it was scary, you know, and I – I couldn’t do anything for Mark, I couldn’t help him, but I could build his website for him. I could make it into what he wanted. He trusted it to me. I couldn’t just walk away. I had to help Facebook become what he’d dreamt. For him.”_

_“So you dropped out of Harvard?”_

_“So I dropped out of Harvard,”_ Eduardo laughs. _”I dropped out of Harvard and I moved to Palo Alto, because that was where Mark wanted the company to be. God, my father was furious. He wouldn’t even look at me for a year and a half.”_

_“And now here you sit,”_ the interviewer says, _”king of the social networking scene.”_

Eduardo laughs. _”No,”_ he says, shaking his head. _”I’m just keeping the throne warm.”_

Eduardo cannot let this go on, because he remembers this part of the interview and he knows that it’s about to get really embarrassing – as if it wasn’t embarrassing already – because the interviewer’s next question is about Mark and where he is now, and Eduardo starts talking about how he visits him every day and talks to him and eats lunch by his bedside. Chris had said this made him look human, but Eduardo is of the opinion that it makes him look crazy and pathetic, and so he clears his throat pointedly, loud enough for Mark to hear him through the headphones.

Mark jumps and spins around, pulling the headphones out and pausing the video as he does so. “Hi,” he says, completely unabashed, and Eduardo raises his eyebrows.

“More research?” Eduardo asks, leaning against the door frame and folding his arms over his chest.

“Yes,” Mark says, tilting his chin up a little bit.

“Anything interesting?” Eduardo inquires dryly.

“Yes,” Mark says again and this time Eduardo just waits, his expression expectant. “Is – was the stuff you said in that interview true, or were you just saying things that would make Facebook look good?” Eduardo’s eyebrows make a truly valiant attempt to disappear into his hairline, but he doesn’t answer. After a moment, Mark huffs out a sigh and tries again. “Did you really visit me every day?” He asks.

“You paused it before that part,” Eduardo says automatically, which is an answer itself, he thinks, but Mark frowns at him.

“I’ve watched it twice,” he says. “Answer the question.”

“Yes,” Eduardo says. “I did. I mean, mostly. Sometimes things came up but – yes, yeah.”

“Oh,” Mark says. “You – you didn’t have to do that.”

This time it’s Eduardo that frowns. “Of course I did, you idiot,” he says. “Come and eat. You have physical therapy in an hour.”  
-  
“Why?” Mark says on the way home from physical therapy that evening and Eduardo glances over at him, surprised, because usually Mark is grumpy and silent after his appointments.

“Why what?” He asks, looking back at the road.

“Why did you have to visit me every day?” Mark asks. “And don’t say because I’m your bestfriend, because Dustin and Chris are my bestfriends too, and they didn’t visit me every day for six years.”

“No, they didn’t,” Eduardo agrees. He’s frowning at the road now, not sure where Mark is going with this.

“So why?” Mark says again.

“The same reason I had to make Facebook huge for you,” Eduardo answers after a long pause.

“That’s not an answer, Eduardo,” Mark snaps.

Eduardo doesn’t say anything for a moment, just turns off the main road and pulls over on a side street. They’re almost home, but apparently Mark wants to have this conversation _now_ and Eduardo cannot talk about this and drive at the same time. He grips the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles go white and stares pointedly at the dashboard instead of looking at Mark. “Do you remember back at Harvard, when Dustin would make jokes about how I followed you around like a lost duck?”

“Yeah,” Mark says. “That was, like, last month for me.”

“I know,” Eduardo says, frustrated. He turns in his seat to look at Mark, finally, and says, “You went somewhere I couldn’t follow. But I had to believe you were going to come back. And when you did, I wanted Facebook to be something you could be proud of. _I_ wanted to be something you could be proud of. I didn’t want you to wake up and regret trusting your idea to me, because – because you loved Facebook so much and I loved _you_ so much and I had to hold onto _something_.” 

He stops talking abruptly, because he’s said more than he meant to. Mark is staring at him with wide eyes. “What,” he starts, but Eduardo cuts him off by leaning in and kissing him, because fuck it, he’s already said too much, might as well go all the way.

“That’s why I visited you every day,” Eduardo says when he pulls away, resting his forehead against Mark’s and very purposefully not opening his eyes. “Does that answer your question?”

“Yes,” Mark says, and then Eduardo feels Mark’s hand on his, and when he opens his eyes, Mark his smiling at him, a real, proper smile. Eduardo smiles back, helpless and so, so happy.


End file.
